Enterasys Mobile IAM Will Address BYOD Challenges

The company’s solution, which will come as a physical or virtual appliance, will offer easier management and better security at a lower cost than competing offerings, officials said.

Enterasys Networks in June will roll out a network solution designed to enable businesses, hospitals and educational institutions to more easily and securely address the growing trend of bring your own device (BYOD).

Enterasys Mobile IAM product, which will be available in either a hardware appliance or for virtualized environments that run VMwares ESX server, will offer identity, access and inventory management, context-based policy enforcement that includes more than 45 attributes, management capabilities through a single console, and automated auditing and reporting.

The goal is to give businesses a single offering that addresses all the elements of BYOD, from the devices that are accessing the corporate networks and the applications that are running on those devices to the employees themselves and their locations, according to Ram Appalaraju, vice president of marketing for Enterasys.

The issue of employees using their personal devicesincluding smartphones and tabletsis a concern for IT administrators, who need to worry about the security of the corporate network and data. Recent surveys have found a disconnect between employeeswho favor the consumerization of IT and the productivity it bringsand businesses, which worry about management and security.

In a recent study by unified email management company Mimecast, 47 percent of respondents said the consumerization of IT was important, though 21 percent said BYOD has been a risk to the business and another 26 percent said their companies do not allow employees to use their own devices for work tasks.

"Employee support for consumerization of IT is in full swing, whether business leaders are ready to admit it or not," Orlando Scott-Cowley, senior product marketing manager of Mimecast, said in a statement. "It's time enterprises fully enable their employees' productivity by not only supporting the range of mobile and tablet devices, but also providing the solutions that ensure corporate data remains secure."

Enterasys Appalaraju agreed. He noted that in the first three months of the year, Apple sold 35 million iPhones and 11.8 million iPads.

Most of these will be making their way into the work environment, into the school environment, into the collect environment, he said.

Mobile IAM, part of Enterasys larger OneFabric Security architecture, is designed to be a simple, cost-effective and scalable way to address the key issues of security, management and user experience. The solution can support any kind of smartphone or tablet, from Apple and Android devices to those running Windows, Research In Motions BlackBerry and Nokia, Appalaraju said.

Users sign into the solution, and Mobile AIMs profiling engine creates a profile that includes everything from the device thats being used and the applications running on it to the users location, authorization, the security software running on the device and network access types.

Key features include auto discovery and provision of users, devices and access locations, the ability to detect device types based on both the OS being used and the device type, and context-based management that enables users to leverage the necessary network resources while giving businesses greater visibility of employees, guests and devices.

Each Mobile IAM applianceboth the physical and virtual versionscan support up to 3,000 devices, and businesses can easily scale by adding more appliances.

Most networking vendors, such as Cisco Systems, Juniper Networks and Avaya, are rolling out solutions aimed at addressing the BYOD trend. However, Appalaraju said many of these are unnecessarily complex and expensive. Each hardware appliance costs $19,995; its $16,995 for a virtual appliance.

Enterasys, which is owned by Siemens Enterprise Communications, also is offering Mobile IAM Professional Services that guarantees a 10-day deployment of a solution that supports up to 3,000 devices, as well as a free needs assessment. Appalaraju said that the company guarantees that no additional IT resources will be needed for the solution.